What is the most troublesome household work? I think most of the people would vote “Cleaning the windows” as the answer, because it is so difficult and dangerous to clean every part of the windows. There were incidents about someone falling from the building during window cleaning. These have raised the awareness of the youngsters and have stimulated their creativity. To tackle this problem, some students have invented a robot car for window cleaning. It is called “Windows XB”. Not only can it move on every corner of the windows, but also clean both outside and inside of the glasses at the same time.

The inventors of the “Windows XB” are three engineering students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. They are Lau Chun Ning, Charles (Electronic Eng.), Lee Pan Shing (Electronic Eng.) and Lei Xiao Xiao (Computer Eng.). They did a wonderful job in the project that they won the 1st runner-up of the “Vice-Chancellor’s Cup of Student Innovation 2007 (VCCI)” in the undergraduate individual category.

The aim of “Vice-Chancellor’s Cup of Student Innovation 2007” is to encourage students to make use of their knowledges and develop their creativity. As there are many projects in different fields, such as mathematics, medicine, management, etc., professors from different faculties are invited to be the judges in order to have an overall and fair judgement. Besides, innovation and technology transferrability are two major criterions.

This competition consists of 4 categories. There are undergraduate individual category, undergraduate group category, postgraduate individual category and postgraduate group category. Each category would have the champion, 1st runner-up and the 2nd runner-up. Every judgement is conscientious and careful. If the project does not reach the standard, the prize would not be presented to them even though they get the highest score in the category. Therefore, we are so proud that our students won the prize in the VCCI.

Apart from the prize, the inventors of “Windows XB” have won the chance to be one of the representatives of The Chinese University of Hong Kong to Tientsin and join the “10th Challenge Cup”. It is a national competition with over 600 teams from about 160 universities, therefore it will be a keen competition. “I feel confident in winning this competition and do not feel stressful. And I think it would broaden my horizons. Even though I lost, I won’t feel disappointed.” said Charles.

The three students are full of fervour in technology invention, two of them are the committee members of Interest Club of the Electronics Engineering (EE Interest Club). They are Lau Chun Ning, Charles (Chairman) and Lee Pan Shing (Recreation). Frankly, they think that joining the EE Interest Club has raised their interest in Electronics Engineering as there are more chances for them to develop different kinds of project. MP3 Player and Digital Thermometer are just some of the developing projects. Finally, Charles encourages students to participate more in these kinds of developing projects and competitions. It would not only raise the students' interest in electronics, but they will also gain invaluable experience too.